Preparation of children and their parents for hospitalization likely results in a reduction of the child's emotional stress in the hospital and post-hospitalization behavior difficulties. Yet most hospitals do not practice it. If purposes, materials, and methods were tested, described, and disseminated, more children could experience a less traumatic hospitalization. To determine the relative effectiveness of a tour of the pediatric unit of the hospital versus booklets describing the impending hospitalization, a study will be conducted. In the first six months, booklets, a tour, and materials for training staff and volunteers will be developed. In the next two years, 540 children from 4-15 years will be randomly assigned to one of 9 groups, balanced for sex, chief diagnosis, and socioeconomics. The groups will consist of three Piaget age categories; each will be divided into 3 subgroups, one receiving the tour, one the booklet, and one neither. The dependent variables are the incidence of vomiting, crying, and restless sleep, and food intake. A questionnaire to parents after one week and again after one month post-discharge will inquire about behavioral manifestations considered to result from hospitalization of children, and the length of them. In the analysis of data, behavioral manifestations will be compared for control and experimental groups by a chi-square test for each age group separately. The 3 age categories, 3 levels of treatment, and daily records will be analyzed for significance by a 3 way analysis of variance and also by multivariate methods.